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Opinions on new graphics card please!

musufasa1986musufasa1986 Member Posts: 14

I am looking at 3 different cards at the moment and want some input from anyone that knows what any of these fancy numbers and letters and specs mean!

I am leaning towards the Zotac AMP 660 ti at the moment. Although I think there is a very small difference between the two 660 ti's?

Zotac Amp ZT 60804 10P GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 816264012839 | eBay

Asus GTX660 TI DC2O 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 | eBay

Sapphire 100352 2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 0 x16 HDC | eBay

 

Positives and negatives of the cards compared to one another?

Comments

  • miguksarammiguksaram Member UncommonPosts: 835

    While I love my Asus for this gen I would have to say among the three you posted your best bang for your buck is easily the Sapphire 7950.

     

    That said are you limited to ebay?  I ask because you could easily get one of those cards for cheaper on sale from one of the maintstream online retailers.

  • musufasa1986musufasa1986 Member Posts: 14
    Originally posted by miguksaram

    While I love my Asus for this gen I would have to say among the three you posted your best bang for your buck is easily the Sapphire 7950.

     

    That said are you limited to ebay?  I ask because you could easily get one of those cards for cheaper on sale from one of the maintstream online retailers.

    Nah I am not limited to only ebay.  But when you factor in taxes that I have to pay for newegg I have yet to find those cards cheaper.

  • jdnewelljdnewell Member UncommonPosts: 2,237

    Those links look like a Newegg Ebay store?

    I did not know they had one. They are a bit cheaper it seems than tigerdirect at least, but I may be tempted to spend the extra $20 from tigerdirect. If nothing else just for the service / return policy if something goes wrong.

    I have always been skeptical about buying electronics off ebay. But if you arent worried about service after the sale those are some great prices, and free shipping.

    I would go with the Sapphire 7950 out of the 3 you linked.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    There's not much sense in getting a GeForce GTX 660 Ti if you can have a Radeon HD 7950 with boost for the same price.  (The "with boost" distinguishes it from the original 7950 that was clocked lower.  This version is 10%-15% faster than the one you'll probably see in reviews of a 7950.)
  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806
    Originally posted by musufasa1986

    I am looking at 3 different cards at the moment and want some input from anyone that knows what any of these fancy numbers and letters and specs mean!

    I am leaning towards the Zotac AMP 660 ti at the moment. Although I think there is a very small difference between the two 660 ti's?

    Zotac Amp ZT 60804 10P GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 816264012839 | eBay

    Asus GTX660 TI DC2O 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 | eBay

    Sapphire 100352 2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 0 x16 HDC | eBay

     

    Positives and negatives of the cards compared to one another?

    Of those I'd go with the Sapphire. One of the down sides of the other two is that they tend to be bottle necked by the 192 bit.  Even though I almost always go with Nvidia for my personal cards.  I would also be wary of Ebay for electronics.  I normally do all of my business through tigerdirect, and I've not had any problems with them over the years.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • musufasa1986musufasa1986 Member Posts: 14

    Thanks for the replies guys!  Looks like the 7950 is the clear favorite!

    If I did buy from ebay it would be from newegg or another well known retailer.  The warranties are still valid and the service is the same as if I bought it off their main site.

  • musufasa1986musufasa1986 Member Posts: 14
    I guess I also should of asked if there were better cards out there $300 or less as well!
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by musufasa1986
    I guess I also should of asked if there were better cards out there $300 or less as well!

    A better card for under $300 isn't likely, apart from other Radeon HD 7950s that could be very slightly better.  If your budget is $300, then the main alternative to a Radeon HD 7950 is to save some of the budget by getting a slower card.

  • musufasa1986musufasa1986 Member Posts: 14

    I also just found this....

     

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

     

    That makes the card $330 after tax.  $310 after rebate... and I can sell the extra coupon for about $50.

     

    Making the card about $260.

     

    Almost a no brainer at this point.

  • ReklawReklaw Member UncommonPosts: 6,495
    Originally posted by musufasa1986

    I am looking at 3 different cards at the moment and want some input from anyone that knows what any of these fancy numbers and letters and specs mean!

    I am leaning towards the Zotac AMP 660 ti at the moment. Although I think there is a very small difference between the two 660 ti's?

    Zotac Amp ZT 60804 10P GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 816264012839 | eBay

    Asus GTX660 TI DC2O 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 | eBay

    Sapphire 100352 2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 0 x16 HDC | eBay

     

    Positives and negatives of the cards compared to one another?

    Not sure but I asume the cards mentioned above are within your budget range?

    Else I would say none of the above and perhaps look at http://www.nvidia.com/titan-graphics-card, thought the pricing was around 899,-

    Of course also depending if you only want a video card upgrade and if all fits your system specs.

    Here some more specs

    • NVIDIA® TXAA™ technology
    • NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0
    • NVIDIA PhysX® technology
    • NVIDIA FXAA™ technology
    • NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync
    • NVIDIA Surround™
    • Support for four concurrent displays including:
      • Two dual-link DVI
      • HDMI1
      • DisplayPort 1.2
    • Microsoft DirectX 11.1 API (feature level 11_0)
    • NVIDIA Project SHIELD™-Ready
    • NVIDIA 3D Vision®-Ready2
    • NVIDIA SLI®-Ready
    • NVIDIA CUDA® technology
    • PCI Express 3.0 support
    • OpenGL 4.3 support
    • OpenCL™ support
    LEARN MORE
    • 1 - Support for HDMI includes GPU-accelerated Blu-ray 3D support (Blu-ray 3D playback requires the purchase of a compatible software player
      from CyberLink, ArcSoft, Corel, or Sonic), x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound. Upgrade your GPU to full 3D capability
      with NVIDIA 3DTV Play software, enabling 3D gaming, picture viewing, and 3D web video streaming. See www.nvidia.com/3dtv for more details.
    • 2 - NVIDIA 3D Vision and Surround require 3D Vision glasses and 3D Vision-ready displays. See www.nvidia.com/get3d for more information.
    • 3 - Minimum system power requirement based on a PC configured with an Intel Core i7 3.2GHz processor.
    • Board Dimensions (Height: 4.376 inches, Length: 10.5 inches)
     
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Reklaw
    Originally posted by musufasa1986

    I am looking at 3 different cards at the moment and want some input from anyone that knows what any of these fancy numbers and letters and specs mean!

    I am leaning towards the Zotac AMP 660 ti at the moment. Although I think there is a very small difference between the two 660 ti's?

    Zotac Amp ZT 60804 10P GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 816264012839 | eBay

    Asus GTX660 TI DC2O 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 TI 2GB 192 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 | eBay

    Sapphire 100352 2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384 Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3 0 x16 HDC | eBay

     

    Positives and negatives of the cards compared to one another?

    Not sure but I asume the cards mentioned above are within your budget range?

    Else I would say none of the above and perhaps look at http://www.nvidia.com/titan-graphics-card, thought the pricing was around 899,-

    Of course also depending if you only want a video card upgrade and if all fits your system specs.

    Here some more specs

     
     
     

    A GeForce GTX Titan costs more than all three of the cards in the original post added together.  It's a nice card, but way, way out of the budget of most people.

  • MusufasaMusufasa Member Posts: 21
    I got the sapphire 7950 card and I am getting a weird mirage looking effect randomly on my screen kind of a random squiggly mirage effect(if that makes any sense lol).... I only had room in my case to have like half a inch of room from the fans of the card to the bottom of the case. But Idle my temps are around 30C and under 100% load they stay around 65-70C. So I dunno whats up?
  • MusufasaMusufasa Member Posts: 21
    Hmmm, it seems that it might only do it when my card is in idle mode? Whenever it is running at a faster gpu and memory clock it does not happen.....
  • jdnewelljdnewell Member UncommonPosts: 2,237
    Originally posted by Musufasa
    I got the sapphire 7950 card and I am getting a weird mirage looking effect randomly on my screen kind of a random squiggly mirage effect(if that makes any sense lol).... I only had room in my case to have like half a inch of room from the fans of the card to the bottom of the case. But Idle my temps are around 30C and under 100% load they stay around 65-70C. So I dunno whats up?

    It sounds like a heat related issue. But your temps appear to be ok from your next post.

    How do you only have 1/2 an inch room from the card and bottom of case?

  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806
    Originally posted by Musufasa
    I got the sapphire 7950 card and I am getting a weird mirage looking effect randomly on my screen kind of a random squiggly mirage effect(if that makes any sense lol).... I only had room in my case to have like half a inch of room from the fans of the card to the bottom of the case. But Idle my temps are around 30C and under 100% load they stay around 65-70C. So I dunno whats up?

    Could be thermal, but I had something like that once, and it turned out to be bad memory in the card itself.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • birdycephonbirdycephon Member UncommonPosts: 1,314

    Thing with Sapphire cards, is they sometimes have funky layouts, and some aftermarket coolers wont fit on them, especially if you're doing liquid cooling.

    I suspect they use a little cheaper parts to try to bring their costs down.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Musufasa
    Hmmm, it seems that it might only do it when my card is in idle mode? Whenever it is running at a faster gpu and memory clock it does not happen.....

    You might have gotten a defective card, and can RMA it for a replacement.

    The lower the clock speeds a video card uses at idle, the less power it consumes.  But if the clock speed goes too low, the chip won't function properly.  AMD and Nvidia try to set their idle clock speeds to the minimum that they can use for which essentially all chips will work fine.  But occasionally a few don't.

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